Australia sanctioned a new regulation on Thursday, August 20th, aimed at forcing large technology companies to pay compensation to local press outlets. This rule, called the News Bargaining Incentive, establishes a 2.5% tax on the advertising revenue of these platforms within the country.
The charge will apply to corporations generating over 250 million Australian dollars in advertising revenue in Australia, including names such as Meta, Google, TikTok, and Microsoft. However, these companies can be exempt from the tax if they manage to reach agreements with Australian press outlets.
To avoid this taxation, large technology companies must provide proof of their investments and comply with specific guidelines designed to prevent excessive concentration in a few media entities. The Australian government clarified that the objective of this measure is not primarily to increase state revenue, but rather to encourage the creation of pacts between platforms and content editors, with the collected amounts being allocated to the media.
Australia has become one of the first countries to institute specific legislation requiring platforms to negotiate with newspapers. Previously, the News Media Bargaining Code, established in 2021, recognized that search engines and social networks had become crucial intermediaries in news distribution. However, it did not foresee the possibility of companies removing content from their services and ceasing negotiations, a situation Meta faced in 2024, as reported by ABC News.
The new legislation aims to correct this gap, as the tax now applies to the advertising revenue of the platforms, regardless of whether they present journalistic links or not.
This Australian legislation has served as a model for other global initiatives, including in Brazil. Bill 1.354/2021, which is still pending in Congress, proposes that platforms with more than two million users compensate content production companies when they use this material, with the amounts being negotiated directly with the publishers or their associations.
In parallel, Google is under investigation by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) for alleged abuse of power in the sector, specifically regarding the use of journalistic productions in its Search services. The Council resumed this issue last year, addressing the evolution of Artificial Intelligence Summaries, which, according to Brazilian press outlets, are impacting portal ad revenue.
While companies argue for the need for financial compensation for content usage, Google denies that AI resources are harming the audience of the outlets and rejects the implementation of remuneration models based on Australian legislation. Despite the absence of specific legislation on the matter, companies can establish agreements with media groups in the country; in May, Grupo Folha and UOL signed an agreement with OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, to license journalistic materials for chatbot responses and for training AI models.